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Spoilers Russell T. Davies Returns to Doctor Who as New Showrunner

Seriously though they can't keep returning to the Tennant well. I get he was hugely popular and while he's by far not my favourite modern Doctor it isn't like I didn't like him in the role, but the point about Doctor Who is change, that's part of what's kept it going all these years and the show is more than just Tennant- heck Matt was just as popular.
I would think that Tennant is enough of a Doctor Who fanboy to know himself that the show can't keep returning to him if it wants to go forward and that he and Piper said they would do a movie because they were in front of a convention crowd and were telling them what they want to hear...

...and yet, Georgia had to say she would divorce him if he returned to Doctor Who again, which indicates that she knows he will. In a heartbeat.

I'm all for bringing people back in inventive ways (Piper is fantastic in The Day of the Doctor because she isn't Rose) but one of the things I didn't like about the Fourteenth Doctor was that he was almost indistinguishable from the Tenth.
I thought Tennant would do something different with Fourteen -- maybe a Scottish accent at a minimum? -- but, yeah, he's just Ten but physically older.

The Specials undoubtedly gave the franchise a shot in the arm but I wonder if it was a bad idea in hindsight, not only did it set the bar higher for Ncuti than if he'd simply been following Whittaker, but the whole bi-generation thing didn't help, hey remember that other Doctor you really liked, guess what, he's still around!
Same thought here.
 
I thought Fourteen was very distinct from Ten. Ten couldn't even bring himself to say that he loved Rose when he thought he was never going to see her again, but we had Fourteen saying "God I loved that man" about Wilf without even thinking about it.
 
Of course, the big question is how would one make such a film accessible for non-Whovians, especially if Piper and Tennant presumably return as their recent Doctor incarnation and all of the baggage that comes with them.
If such a film is made, it needs to be made in a way that people who haven't seen Doctor Who can understand, just like the old Star Trek films. So, using only David Tannet or Billie Piper, giving them a completely new companion, not mentioning anything that happened in the show, and explaining the origins of the Doctor for the "theater" audience, making it a film they can fully understand.
 
I think if they ever do a DW film (and I’m not convinced they ever will - remember the one david Yates was supposed to be doing about a decade ago), the Cushing movies aren’t a bad template to follow. No continuity from the series, make it its own thing but maybe borrow from the best of the tv show in terms of plot or story. You have a reasonably big name (but someone who is Doctor-ish) in the lead, but is his or her own doctor, they’re not 1,4,10 or whoever. Just make it an accessible fun film in the mould of the tv show.
 
If such a film is made, it needs to be made in a way that people who haven't seen Doctor Who can understand, just like the old Star Trek films. So, using only David Tannet or Billie Piper, giving them a completely new companion, not mentioning anything that happened in the show, and explaining the origins of the Doctor for the "theater" audience, making it a film they can fully understand.

I don’t think it would go that far, nor need to. At the end of the day, it it’s domestic market there’s more than enough familiarity. (Side note: as with the Bond movies, I laugh when Brit films are declared having a bad domestic box office — by which such discussions usually mean US Box Office.)

I think the old Trek films don’t particularly do that either — there’s zero explanation about the past in TMP or TWOK. TVH had a sort of ‘previously on’ for world markets covering the events of the last two films, but at no point was anything laid out in the films particularly. It was just cultural osmosis.

In terms of Who movies, and why it never really made another jump to screen after the Amicus Dalek films, well — Who fans would want the continuity, and a general audience that might be tempted to see it would expect it to be thee even if it wasn’t these days.
Historically, that meant a totally different continuity (the amicus films, the aborted ‘last of the time lords’ project in the nineties) or simply putting feature length episodes out on a cinematic release. Which has been done well (Day of the Doctor) poorly (the recent finales) and mediocre (also the finales if I am being more kind, but also I think Deep Breath no?)

I think dragging those two back for an attempt to take it to the big screen just plain wouldn’t work — if it’s about international audiences, then Smith and Gillan are bigger in every conceivable way. Even Moffat is bigger internationally than RTD.

All of which is just a long way of saying I don’t think it would work, and would be a misfire to attempt.
Twenty years time as a cinematic reboot? Maybe.
While the show is still nominally in the public consciousness?
Will do more harm than good.
 
I think if they ever do a DW film (and I’m not convinced they ever will - remember the one david Yates was supposed to be doing about a decade ago),
I feel Yates did make his Doctor Who film. It's just called Fantastic Beasts (and its sequels), and Newt Scamander is the Doctor in look and style.

Neil Gaiman wrote long ago that the real business of Hollywood is meetings, and only sometimes do movies happen.
 
I saw at least the first two Fantastic Beasts movies because my wife was interested. I remember very little about them except that they looked like they cost a lot of money to make, and they were long, or at least felt that way.
 
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